For this third
installment Spielberg, Lucas,
and writer Jeffrey Boam decided
to punch up the comedy and flesh
out the backstory to avoid the
danger of serial flameout. An
extended prologue tracks young
Indiana Jones (played by River
Phoenix) through an adventure
in which he picks up his trademark
fedora, bullwhip, and fear of
snakes. But what really sparked
the Indiana
Jones and the Last Crusade
story was the casting of none
other than James Bond himself
in the role of Jones' father.

With a budget
of $36 million, the globe-trotting
crew started shooting in Spain,
London, West Germany, Jordan,
Venice, Texas, Colorado, New
Mexico, and Utah over the course
of six months. And their greatest
technical challenges was to
re-create virtually every form
of transportation available
in 1938, including trains, planes,
boats, tanks, and a zeppelin.
Their most impressive challenge
is the sequence in which Indy
pursues a Nazi tank on horseback.
That ten-minute scene, much
of which was improvised, took
two full weeks to film!

The work, once
again, produced a major payoff.
Indiana
Jones and the Last Crusade
opened on May 24, 1989 and became
the first film in history to
gross $50 million in a single
week, besting the pervious record
of nearly $46 million set by
it's own Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom.
By the time the cash registers
quieted, the film had pulled
in $197 million in domestic
grosses alone.

The Indiana Jones
series were originally planned
as a trilogy, and The
Last Crusade's final
shot of Indy and his father
riding into the sunset had "The
End" written all over it.
But some rumors claim that Spielberg
and Lucas are working on a fourth
and final installment.

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